Wine Tours in Ireland? Not exactly! And Ireland may not be the first country that springs to mind when you think of a gourmet vacation. However we have noticed a massive shift towards food awareness and artisan production (cheese, smokehouses, rare whiskeys, etc) in Ireland in the last few years (Des is Irish and we visit Ireland regularly). One of Slow Food’s most active chapters is Ireland, farmers markets have been rejuvenated in many towns, gourmet festivals are sprouting up like mushrooms and cooking classes are all the rage. Pair all of this with huge investments for renovations of historic manor homes and hotels taking place throughout Ireland and it didn’t take us long to decide that Ireland could be a very interesting location for our food and wine loving clients.

So here we are, in Cork, Ireland for the summer, doing research trips for the best part of 6 weeks to visit whiskey distilleries, famous and up and coming restaurants, castles, and new stylish boutique hotels, tidy towns and fishing villages to find the creme de la creme suppliers for our new tours. Keep an eye out for our site inspection notes which will be posted throughout the summer! Oh, and we did actually here rumors of wine being made somewhere near Kinsale, more on that later….